MY BLIND HEART is the character study of Kurt, who suffers from the Marfan Syndrome and tries to rebel against his body.
Christos Haas, who plays Kurt, suffers from the rare Marfan Syndrome in real life. His left eye is blind and his right eye has about 20% vision. The Marfan Syndrome is a defect of the connective tissue, the risk of a sudden rupture of the aorta is imminent.
Christos and I have known each other since high school and already then, at the age of 13, I wanted to make a film with him. Because of Christos’ physical appearance people gave him nicknames such as “Dracula” and the film I pictured back then would probably have been a spooky film of some sort – with Christos as the new “Nosferatu Kinski”.
Time passed, and we changed with it. When we finally did work together it turned into something completely different, something much more personal. For many scenes Christos went to different unpleasant places, always with the aim to present the character of Kurt and bring it to life with all its contradictions. One of our main goals was to make a film about a man with a handicap, who is allowed to be at least as much of a culprit as Travis Bickle or Alexander DeLarge are. The Marfan Syndrome, or the other handicaps that the actors Robert Schmiedt or Pranav Lal suffer from, were never a starting point for us to exercise corruption of the lacrimal glands of the audience. On the contrary, we have chosen a path where we became friends, like band members who play together, each with his name and his instrument or sometimes even the opportunity to play multiple instruments at the gig. I took the real disease of a person and built a fictional story around it.
MY BLIND HEART identifies a society which, by means of an extended arm – technology – develops in a direction that leads away from the body. It is the direction of permanent activity, always on the run from loneliness and with the goal of optimisation. A tendency, where designer babies seem to become definite and with that a potential extinction of our main character’s existence. Through Kurt’s starting position in this society due to his body I try to ask the question of a return to the body, which for me is our last outcry in the 21st Century.
MY BLIND HEART is a film which is directed inward, which puts the perception of its main character and his inner world at the center.
This decision has also affected the aesthetics of the film and provided a lot of space for the opportunity to work with abstraction.
The way one makes a film, always describes the film one makes. In my film the borders between victors and the defeated, lovers and the beloved, David and Goliath, mother and son are torn apart. Who is the victim here, who the perpetrator?
Peter Brunner
MY BLIND HEART 